in toledo ohio
		----------------------------------------------------------

		in toledo ohio a forklift
		slips unloading express mail
		slides and comes to rest
		wedged between the unpunctured train and
		the treacherous platform

		two hours -- then a tow truck.

		we become instant friends:
		the wired bespectacled briton and i and
		the l.a. musician -- a keyboard a gut a 50s
		salt and pepper haircut

		while the sharp-tongued shrew from ahead of me
		shoos us out to the caf-car -- she wants to sleep
		aye, eyeshields up, captain.

		thus, later, for ever and ever
		i am the one to inherit her evil eye.

		this is a professional woman -- in trains and training.
		she's highly trained for thousands of miles of track.

		she takes no prisoners or nonsense or idle conversation
		at one in the morning -- off-keel forklift or not.

		the briton remarks on the merits of the tottenham
		hotspurs -- you know, the soccer team playing 
		at wembley in the beatle movie help!  when ringo is
		not to be eaten by the ode to joy-fond tiger which escaped
		from the london zoo, raised in berlin's on the classics...

		swami says...  would that movie be too tacky for
		today -- a moviehouse to be ushered to the caf-car?

		meanwhile, behind us but not too far
		a thin old greek in a navy blazer testifies
		to the failings of the eastern gifts of amtrak:

		he is speaking entirely too loudly
		like a mantra like a broken record
		like a prayer wheel like a drum
		the amused and embarrassed and polite young
		asian couple is kept captive -- with a baby -- nearby:

		so we all hear -- in an absolute stillness
		of the toledo at-station unhappiness:

		da chee-burger, da chee-burger on da western train
		was 6 dollar.  much better much better chee-burger.
		and they give you train with two floor.  you can see
		better country from two floor than one floor.

		that is true.   you do have a point.
		in this night brave and crazy you could see for miles
		and miles and miles and miles of aisles -- the very
		hissing of the ice-glazed lawns -- tripping the forklift
		fantastic -- if you only had my music on...


			Marek Lugowski
			6 May 1997
			Chicago, Illinois